Trainer and instructor at the Police Academy in new york city. Welcome to washington journal. 202 7488001 good to be with guest good to be with you. Host let me ask about how this started. What you think went wrong in the encounter between the four officers and george floyd on that memorial day arrest attempt . Guest it is a complex conversation and it will consume a lot of time. It is a terrible outcome, my condolences to the deceased and the family of the deceased. In my view, the starting point is the play could break down at the top, i dont know why political officers in a pandemic are involved in a 20 counterfit bill custodial arrest. The think thats the same thing pened in the eric andre the eric garner arrest. Any police interaction, this is obviously a horrible 1, 8 minutes on the guys neck, but no one can promise that you cant have some version of this Going Forward to you will have some version of this Going Forward. People offering the idea that if you can train you can train your way to a point where this wont happen again. Get that out of your mind, there is no way to do that. The only way to do that is to curtail policing and receipt and city after city, policing has been curtailed. In philly and milwaukee and chicago, baltimore, the police are inoperative, almost like chapter 11. If anyone has doubts that american policing is in its twilight. Then, look what happened this weekend. The headlines should have been that the collapse of policing, the new york times, washington post, a hate campaign against the police that raged on for five years, no fact was too important to ignore,isrepresentation, it raged on 5000 articles, negative articles , not one article talked about policing from the urban specter of a police person. The conversation we will have to have now, we should have had five years ago, this was a long time coming, how we will protect the country with the police in much smaller availability and one of the reasons for that is there has been and no doubt will continue this will be exacerbated, a collapse of interest in young people to be Police Officers, who in their right mind would want to put on a Police Uniform in a big city . What walk would you have to climb out of . Weekend, lawlessness and looting and rioting, the you callous example of the collapse of policing, but they today in cities like new york and baltimore, how does that evidence itself . What does that look like, that lack of policing or drawback my police . Itst plenty of places, looks like murder with no consequences. It means police make get to your house, they dont have a lot of power. If you are going to construct a , 30ersation about policing comeon calls the police to out the enormous amount of work that people do their, and the cops know how much good work they do and dont recognize the caricature that people are throwing out there, but if you 25 milliono say that calls, mostly without incidents , not necessarily misconduct, that that is enough to stop the city in its tracks and these mayors have a lot to answer these mayors who drove the trains and drove their cities over the cliff, mayors like garcetti and durkin who were more extremist and the extremist voices and agreed there is no institution in america were standup police, that nothing is worse, the city could be sacked or looted, you could have 20,000 homicides in chicago, nothing is worse than the american police, that is where they took the conversation and they cant get out of that now. They grant standard against all police, they told the public that they were some sort of monster that had to be tamed, the reality is that a few people die when police do their job, far more people die when police dont do their job. These cities like detroit, police a shooting a couple years ago, those shootings have flatlined, Response Time has flatlined, they have flatlined because there is no policing. This conversation, there are two groups of people that have been silenced in this conversation. One would be Police Officers. But what they know . I never had a conversation with a cop that i learned three or four things, that are good insights. In the community on the ground that does not take the police or is amenable to police reform. You have an elitist in an ivory tower take over this conversation, people in Hollywood Hills who have their security guaranteed, taking pot shots and smearing the police. If we have learned anything in the last couple weeks, the institutions have to be nobody speaks for institutions. Responsible people stand up for institutions. Fbi malignor shamelessly by both parties, particular lead the Republican Party, the president at this point, no more Important Agency than the fbi in Racial Justice and going after the terrorists, they have latched onto these protests and deconstruct policing, and that is absurd. There is no way to do that. The construct of the fbi, if people dont have political opinions, what kind of people would be federal Law Enforcement that dont have opinions . They would look at candidates for sure and conclude they are unfit for office and people can judge by the fbi thinks people are unfit for office. Host we will open up our phone lines for our viewers and listeners to talk with eugene odonnell, lecturer at the college of criminal justice, former officer as well. Fourines, 202 7488001 republicans, 202 7488000 four democrats, for independence, 202 7488002. If you are a Law Enforcement official, the line is 202 7488003. We will get to your calls and comments in a moment. A question for you about new yorks police force, you were part of the Public SafetyTransition Team for mayor de blasio in 2013, a headline says, deb lazio faces cheers as police crackdown. The is in the wake of protests and biden, the looting in new york city. Hattie think the nypd has fared . Guest i think they have fared quite well. Are recordsthere for people trying to pick fights with the nypd, thousands of people have vilified and got into the faces of and provoked and attacked and used hate speech and targeted africanamerican cops and they are looking they have not gotten it they will eventually get it, it is amenable it is inevitable, some video that will show the police as a 1930s group with batons raised over peoples heads so they can use it to further distort the conversation. The mayor of new york has played a despicable goal in this conversation, as have so many other socalled progressive people, senator sanders comes to mind, people who have thesponsibly demagogued issue a Public Safety by saying, who is the villain . The villain is the police. We will take this complicated issue of urban safety take senator sanders, who repeatedly during his campaign with young people hanging on his every word , had no solutions to the problems of urban america, talk about a cynical approach, he knew, he was a mayor, he ran burlington, all he had to say was, Public Safety is a complicated conversation, and he knew the room would empty out, so he engaged in this 1, 2, 3 Year Campaign slightly suggesting that we should be hunting for enemies, the wealthy , starbucks, target, all these entities that were targeted, im not pinning all the blame on senator sanders, id is noticed yesterday, his twitter feed, he is confused about what whether looting has a value or not value that is a terrible thing. It is not too late for the people that did this to correct the records. ,olicing cannot be resuscitated but the damage that these folks did will enter. We are on a path, who will protect the police . If it will not be the police . Will it be the army . Private security people with ar15s . Will every man, woman and child have a gun . We have a strongman government . But have Political Violence where leaders are cal . Had a congressman from the Republican Party shot, a congresswoman shot in the head, attempts to breach the white house, these are very serious conversations, it should have been done for five years and what is discouraging is the conversation about policing got narrower and narrower and the larger conversation got totally polarized and hijacked. Cspan is the only place in the country for anybody to have a conversation that is not insane at this point. Host we have callers waiting period i want to ask you about , the Supreme Court reporter writes that his as into new, the Supreme Court is examining a form of immunity that has shielded police from lawsuits about Excessive Force and other government officials for alleged civil rights violations. The court could announce as soon as monday whether it will accept for argument x term challenges to a doctrine called qualified immunity. It protects officers from lawsuits unless plaintiffs can violated the acute clearly established laws or constitutional rights, they should reasonably be aware of. What is your view on the qualified immunity argument . Guest this is being pushed out by the lunatic fringe that hijacked this conversation and the idea going after police unions. The idea that only the police have the idea of using force in society. Elected officials, they made that case. They made the case that they could not understand why the palouse would that the police would use physical force in a country awash in guns. Im in a city that has 84 shootings last weekend, play for fatalities, and enormous amount of violence, now we have a situation where we will get a report card to cops who are going into these situations and a lot of times how much they are told not they cant help but abide by the oath. The Chicago Police last night and a highspeed chase after someone committed a homicide, which is basically decriminalized, you wonder why they are doing yet, but this is the conversation, this is where we are at. The use of force is brutality, the use of deadly force is policing cant be coerced ever, and we are hearing things like the officer had a prior history of using force. Mayors could have cleaned this up before it got radioactively hot, they could have been courageous, could have used political capital, they failed. What we just saw is how one connected the mayors are. They have no connection to their own communities. , we needbout cameras to have cameras on politicians. Wouldnt all of us like to know when he for hours, seven days a week, for the last week or two, leading up to the riots, where these mayors were, what were they doing, what leadership did they exert, what relationships to the have in the community . I believe most of these mayors about it is a vanity project, there is no connection. They know they cant solve fundamental problems, so they will take the most cynical beachbody these problems they cant begin to solve, they sent to their constituents, the only problem in this country is the police. That is what they said, they led the charge, now they have they cant get ahead of a lunatic fringe that was to put the police out of business. Thats where they are. The center of this conversation is whether were not the police should be put out of business and the mayors in these cities have a lot to answer for. They themselves driving the train, and if the police are put out of business, as police are out of business all over, people in neighborhoods that will not be able to get home safely, they will pay the price. There are millions of americans who will conduct late whether they will stay in cities, cities are going to be for going places. If they are not safe, cities will clear out. Jeannie andld go to california, democrats line. Think i really rehabilitation of all police stations should be mandatory and effective immediately. I talked to several people hoping they are really that they will retrain, somehow get some transparency. There is an officer known to be d to a number of citizens known to be rude to a number of citizens. This guy has a history, we should be able to say, this officer, they should be validated with video. They should not be allowed to keep getting pats on the back. , one adrenaline goes up may be more susceptible than the other. All these things, all that stuff needs to be transparent. If these people are going to police me at all the future people out there, they need to know that they are going to be safe. That is what this is about. This is what they are fighting for. Host your thoughts . Guest with respect, they are not going to police you or anybody else in the most complicated conversation. The lasting anybody should think its helpful now is a lecture to the police on human rights after their human rights were in many different ways by mayors, mayor lightfoot in chicago asked the Chicago Police after the police defended the city and worked 12 hour tours, that just got three hours of sleep, the mayor failed in her mission to collect to protect the city. Imagine watching television and finding out the mayor is listing complaints at that late stage against the police. Look at the hate speech i have not seen anything written about mr. Floyds death, i have seen tens of thousands of threatening, vile hate speech directed against the police and if anybody thinks the police are in a particular mood now to get lectured to by people who would never do their job, never put themselves in harms way, i saw police in chicago, in philly the other night, officers, many were white, many were not white, they were protecting black, west philadelphia. If the neighborhood burns down or any neighborhood burns down, that neighborhood will never come back. Those costs were discharging their duty and was honorable way. The media was there. What they where the asked what were they there to do . To find another story they could write negatively about the police. The untold story of policing and the last few days is how maybe a thousand cops literally saved some parts of cities. Ineveryone knows who was philly and chicago, store owners, immigrants, the vulnerable were left to their own devices. Philadelphia was wide open, 911 was not answered. Police were told to allow people to boot, which might have been a good idea, but this is not a good time for people to be liking their fingers at police wagging their fingers at Police Officers. Progressive mayors have crated an environment where they cannot defend themselves. Host we have a line for lawenforcement officers, that line, 202 7488003. Mike in maryland, good morning. Caller im a Law Enforcement officer now because the police cant do their jobs. I may national guardsmen, i have to get activated because of this pity party eugene is having for himself about how so hard it is for cops, it is so impossible for us to not put knees on the next of protesters. This is a direct correlation between those cities that are having riots and those that arent and it is directly aligned to the Police Officers that are conducting their riots. Has been quiet because cops have not been teargassing and knocking over old people, driving cars into crowds, all of the outrages, unbelievable, violent, fascist nonsense that guys like eugene are responsible for. This guy is a clown. , wipes the problem policing in new york has been an issue. You can battle him off, this guy goes directly from the Police Department to training cops at the cop academy, a. K. A. , host we will hear a response from eugene. Guest sound like a speech to me. But we will move on. There is no interest looking at the data, we are in an environment where you can fight a balanced piece looking at the historic abuses that have occurred, the complicated relationship in the Africanamerican Community, there is no place to publish that analysis, no one would read it. If you compare the and white if you compare the nypd to the ku klux klan, 6 Million People will read that. If the president should deploy teenagers andto shoot them down, 6 Million People will read that. We have an extremist conversation. Cspan is the only place left in the center. I know that these stories you knew a lot were not true. You may not have known where to be going to take us, but had do we all feel now, where we are . We feel better today . In a country that is increasingly ungovernable . Where are we going to be in five years or 10 years time . It is going to be with policing having a much smaller footprint. As to some of the cities that dont have disturbances, some of the cities that have disturbances have a strong every levels of weathered crime, streets that are among the most dangerous. It is a complicated conversation. To do it ethically is hard. If police do their jobs, some people may lose their lives, but if police dont do their jobs, thousands of people will lose lives. Police used to be willing to go out in cop cards and take risks, they can no longer do that. This is a triumph for the extreme left. This is a victory for the extreme left, the collapse of policing. Chicago, ninein africanamerican kids will be alive on saturday and the next sunday and they wont be alive. Host let me get to south carolina, good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to know, with every if there werent four white cops showing up at that scene, if they had an interracial set, there would have been less trouble. With all these police sheets policee chiefs keeps saying we will not allow police to do their jobs, it is tying their hands up. Mayorse governors and and Police Chiefs and everybody else, they are tying everybodys hands up, they need to stop that stuff. We have enough of that in congress and we dont need it for people to get hurt on the streets. As we know from congress, when you make decisions, you draw fire and you draw heat. This is a complicated conversation, i think most people are open to having a real conversation, not the insane mediadriven circus that we have. Minneapolisoting in involving african officer, he shot a white woman. We can have this conversation. It needs to be data driven. A city like new york, the Police Department every metric proves restraint in every possible way. Not saying there is not abuses, anything of the work they do, violent, adversarial work against people, people think of Police Officers who must arrest in a demented violence call. We can tell police do not make that arrests and since is an enormously charged situation, no matter what the Police Police have to do that. Anyone of those arrests could end with a death. It is very easy for officers to get injuries, there are many officers injured in routine arrests. Host a question from florida. Should officers live in the communities or neighborhoods in which they serve . Guest right fix for a assault, the violets, the clear and present danger the police have faced. Unsupported with a history of lunatics showing up. The mayors are urging a lunatic fringe into their industries. Suggestion by mayor de blasio that the police are marauding through neighborhoods and picking on people randomly, how disingenuous. Know afterppears to six years, all you have to do to curb the police is tell them not to do proactive policing. Tell them not to do it and own the fact that if you take guns off the street, lives will be lost. If you say that to the people, you contextualize the conversation. This is a strawman argument. Why would the police on their own, people dont care if the city is attacked and people are shot. The mayor is going on to defend them, thisd besmirch is a same conversation. I have been warning that if we dont have a serious conversation about this topic, policing is going to collapse. Thousands of departments will be directly affected. Any department is at risk if the formulation is one event, one thing that is upsetting and it simply cant be met. That is going to be the standard. There are two good reasons to spend our money. The second is the fact that we cant get anyone if we want to find someone who wants to be an urban cop. Do us a favor, mute your volume. I just did, good morning. Like to begin, i preface my remarks by saying i am not in any way trying to excuse egregious police behavior. There are two things that concern me that i would like her guest comments on. Beenr one, why has there no meaningful discussion about the rate of crime in the black communities . It seems to be totally ignored. We hear about the mass incarceration and scenario seems to be that the police are indiscriminately picking up blackmails and putting them in prison. Why dont we discussed the high rate of homicide and other Violent Crimes committed within the black community . The second matter i would like you to comment on is, in the last 20 or 30 years, i do have seen an incredible increase in the amount of destructive weapons available to the general public. Those weapons make themselves available to the criminal element and police seem to be outgunned. I can understand why perhaps the adopted a more militarized approach, because it is becoming increasingly dangerous for them to do their job. People of all persuasions took cheap shots at the police and now you are seeing the complexity of that conversation. Question, which was the rate of crime, mass incarceration was a catastrophe in the country. Arrest that were made that were ludicrous. Minneapolis, the fact that that as a is still being held policing matter, we should hang ourselves and shame. We summer this was going when it was turned into a metric driven many people like Rudy Giuliani was one of the most reviled persons in the Africanamerican Community wanted to run for senate 1 has beenack vote driven out should atone and democrats new and i tell myself in that also we are not seeing the slow burning catastrophe of over jailing a country that had available in college and school but always had a jail cell available. We had to do sensible justice reform. The Republican Party should unite the country. On things like bail reform which is mostly the right thing to do. There are exceptions to that. That is mostly the right thing to do. The media have some shame. School shootings, terrorist attacks, the idea that the police can come in and playing set g and sedans and have molotov cocktails thrown at them and they are rolled over and nobody could figure out why the police would have more equipment. This is the most new wants conversation, it takes years to have. I talked to five cops in the city, ive learned 25 things. The narrowness and insanity of a conversation is so spiriting at this point. Where are we going to be . The next five years . This is regina. I appreciate your position and what you are saying on the far left. I am appalled that you are talking about trump and republicans being a problem. In pittsburgh, we have it is run by democrats. They are both sanctuary cities beforewatched the people the protests and east liberty and other places, the businesses who the police could not protect because all that you are saying right here, the money went to whoing parks in pittsburgh were putting more money into have more we can emotionally disturbed children who when i was a substitute teacher i knew someday that child would be before a policeman like you while the principal told me i dont need to help, i dont need any help. If they throw a chair at me, so what. Likel for you, but i feel it is time to realize what you originally said. The police did standdown. What is the problem if mr. Trump is standing up there saying i want to protect his peoples businesses. I want them to be able to take their own property and not be like the police being injured. As far as im concerned, what is the fuss with these minorities getting coronavirus and having a high rate of it when they are all standing together having a big protest and throwing bottles and some of the whites are doing that to. We have a white man picked up in pittsburgh im not sure what his name is. He put out a gofundme account to try to get a stupid lawyer. It got shut down because he torched and encouraged torching. Good afternoon, everybody. An opportunity to catch up, check in, and an opportunity to introduce you to